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Adapting to Adversity: Effects of Covid- 19 on Parenting In Chile

Wed, April 7, 10:15 to 11:15am EDT (10:15 to 11:15am EDT), Virtual

Abstract

The current COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic is affecting children's wellbeing in multiple ways, one being the negative consequences on caregivers’ mental health and family environment (Brown et al., 2020). Thus, it is vital to examine parent and home-related variables to better understand the risk of adjustment of children in the pandemic context (Prime et al., 2020). However, data collected during this crisis - without information on family previous functioning- limits our understanding of the effects of the C-19 pandemic. To address this gap in this study we aim to:
1)Compare the levels of depressive symptoms, parental stress, and home organization at three assessment times: during 2018 when children were 3 years old (T1), when the mandatory lockdown started in Santiago (T2), and 40 days later (T3).
2)Examine whether previous contextual and individual variables explain differences between individual levels of mental health, parental stress, and home organization at the start of lockdown (T2).
3)Understand how previous contextual and individual variables may explain changes in parental perceived mental health, parental stress, and home organization.
4)Examine whether previous contextual and individual variables relate to the (in)consistency of parenting and children behaviors during lockdown.
We included a sub-sample of families from a previous research project started in 2018 (T1) which collected information on the quality of parent-child interactions (Deater-Deckard, Pylas & Petrill, 1997); home organization (CHAOS; Matheney et al. 1995); parental depressive symptoms (CES-D; Radloff, 1977); Parental Stress (PSS, Berry & Jones, 1995) and involvement (Meuwissen & Carlson, 2015). Parents (N=63) completed a questionnaire on the socio-economic effects due to the C-19 crisis and the number of lockdown days, CHAOS, CES-D, and PSS, a personality questionnaire, and the Depression Experience Questionnaire (Blatt, D’Afflitti & Quinlan, 1976). Between T2 and 3 an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) was employed; participants completed a set of 15 online questionnaires which included a Mobile Survey Parent-Child Dynamic (Li & Lansford, 2018), a brief version of the Coparenting Relationship Scale (Feinberg, Brown & Kan, 2012) and the stress items of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress scale (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995).
Findings are presented in Table 1. We highlight the fact that depressive symptoms increased from T1 to T2, but not to T3. Parents with high scores in self-criticism and those who reported higher economic strain due to the C-19 crisis showed an increase in depressive symptoms from T1 to T2 . Parental stress showed no significant change from T1 to T2 and to T3. The levels of CHAOS had a significant increase from T1 to T2 and a small but significant decrease from T2 to T3.
Preliminary EMA results (Table 2) showed that the linear trajectory variation was of small magnitude for good behavior and coparenting. The results suggest significant linear slope variability for good behavior, sensitive parenting, and co- parental support.
Our results showed that families seem to adapt to levels of uncertainty during C-19 and that personal and contextual characteristics may place families at risk for C-19-related disruptions.

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